The initial fire up was an awesome success! Great job to everyone involved!
A note of interest here, for this first fire it used two separate fuel related systems, one being 41 years old, and one being a new addition. And the nitro system hasn't even come into play yet.
As you have seen on TV, the starting line procedure for a Top Fuel car is pretty strait forward: open the injector butterflies, squirt in a shot of gasoline which (thanks to gravity) runs down into the blower, close the injector blades, open the fuel pump shutoff, and hit the starter. Pull the mag ground clips and things happen. In those few seconds the engine runs on gasoline, the fuel pump has nitro pumped into the injector lines and you can hear the difference in the running sound as it takes over.
BUT the Sorcerer has its blower mounted upside down with the intake manifold above, and the injector underneath, it's defying gravity now, so how to get that initial charge of gasoline in for the lite off? And how can it stay running for an extended warmup without running on nitro?
Here is where the genius of Sr, Byron, and their many collaborators shows yet again.
They incorporated a very small pressurized gasoline section into the frame, on spinning the starter the valve is opened and gas squirted through the injector lines for firing, just enough for the engines to start and nitro to take over. Very clever.
But now we're looking at the initial fireup of a 41 year old machine that's been through 12 years of countless manhours of restoration, everything needs to be checked out, the brief run time provided by its gasoline starting circuit puts very little heat into the head, and quite frankly everyone's a little apprehensive of that first nitro pop.
So a plan was devised to run the engines on alcohol for an extended time, it's quite simple but was a real challenge to plumb in this complex application.
For a blown car we connect a small flexible hose line between the top of the blower and the base of the injector, the other end is just dropped into an alcohol jug. Once started the engine's vacuum sucks enough fuel to run at a fast idle, allowing the motor to be warmed up without burning that $40 a gallon nectar of the gods. It also allows fuel to lubricate the blower stripping which is a big deal.
Robert Prayther who did the fuel system plumbing seen earlier, did the mental and physical gymnastics to actually FIND this spot and attach a line there. The closer you REALLY look at the Sorcerer the more challenging this becomes. Good job man. The complexity of this machine is mind boggling.
Everyone that participated along the way I'd say we all have a reason to be proud.
